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EDAC Game of Thrones: Bob Smith is the New Executive Director

EDAC Game of Thrones: Bob Smith is the New Executive Director
by Paul McLellan on 05-15-2015 at 7:00 am

Bob Smith has been appointed executive director of EDAC, following the retirement of Bob Gardner after nearly 20 years. Bob (Smith) was most recently the marketing and business development VP for Uniquify. However, he has been in the industry for a long time with stints at IKOS, Synopsys, LogicVision and Magma. He has even been … Read More


Design Collaboration, Requirements and IP Management at #52DAC

Design Collaboration, Requirements and IP Management at #52DAC
by Daniel Payne on 05-14-2015 at 12:00 pm

For SoC designers attending DAC in June you probably want to check out the EDA vendors that enable design collaboration among your engineers and designers that are spread out across a building, campus or the globe. Dassault Systemes does offer tools and methodologies for: Design collaboration, requirements and IP management.… Read More


Intel and eASIC: Marriage or Just Good Friends?

Intel and eASIC: Marriage or Just Good Friends?
by Paul McLellan on 05-14-2015 at 7:00 am

A couple of days ago Intel announced a collaboration with eASIC. Here is the opening paragraph of the press release:Intel Corporation today announced plans to develop integrated products with eASIC Corporation that combine processing performance and customizable hardware to meet the increasing demand for custom compute Read More


Samsung Foundry Update!

Samsung Foundry Update!
by Daniel Nenni on 05-13-2015 at 11:00 pm

It is hard to believe that Samsung is celebrating their 10[SUP]th[/SUP] anniversary in the foundry business this year. It certainly has not been an easy road but as of late you cannot argue with the results. Samsung is the first foundry to put 14nm silicon into smart phones, beating the #1 semiconductor company (Intel) and the #1 … Read More


Quark Adds Muscle to Intel in the IoT World

Quark Adds Muscle to Intel in the IoT World
by Pawan Fangaria on 05-13-2015 at 4:00 pm

We have been hearing about Intel’s Quark processor, which is based on its good old Pentium, making waves in IoT world. The CPU core of Quark is said to be the smallest in Intel. It is supposed to be inexpensive and extremely low in power; a perfect combination for IoT devices. The Pentium architecture equips the processor to perform… Read More


"An art can only be learned in the workshop of those who are winning their bread by it"

"An art can only be learned in the workshop of those who are winning their bread by it"
by Paul McLellan on 05-13-2015 at 7:00 am

That was said by the novelist Samuel Butler, but it is not a bad description of why you should spend the Sunday at DAC in one of the workshops that are taking place that day.

One workshop is on Design Automation for Beyond CMOS Technologies. Before getting to design automation, it is good to start with which technologies are potentially… Read More


Chip Design – Coming of Age in the Computer Age

Chip Design – Coming of Age in the Computer Age
by Mike Gianfagna on 05-13-2015 at 2:30 am

Previously, I examined chip design in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was a nostalgic ride – thanks to all those who shared their stories. I enjoyed reading all of them. I drew two basic conclusions in the prior post:

[LIST=1]

  • Chip design problems are the same, more or less, over time. The numbers just get bigger
  • Raising abstraction
  • Read More

    Beware of Parameter Variability in Clock Domain Crossings

    Beware of Parameter Variability in Clock Domain Crossings
    by Jerry Cox on 05-12-2015 at 4:00 pm

    How should we assess the risk of harmful metastability in a clock domain crossing (CDC) when the semiconductor process has significant parameter variability? One possibility is to determine the MTBF of a synchronizer at the worst-case corner of the CDC. But that approach has some conflicting complications:

    • Synchronizer failures
    Read More

    Is Low Power a Challenge? ICE-Grain Answers the Challenge

    Is Low Power a Challenge? ICE-Grain Answers the Challenge
    by Paul McLellan on 05-12-2015 at 7:00 am

    Blogs have limited wordcount so insert your own generic opening paragraph here about the importance of low power in IC design. Mention IoT and cloud datacenters for extra credit.

    It is well-known that the biggest reductions in power come from changes at the architectural level. Tools and process can do some things and since they… Read More


    Experts Talk at Mentor Booth

    Experts Talk at Mentor Booth
    by Pawan Fangaria on 05-11-2015 at 7:00 pm

    It’s less than four weeks to go at DAC 2015 and the program is final now. So I started investigating new technologies, trends, methodologies, and tools that will be unveiled and discussed in this DAC. In the hindsight of the semiconductor industry over the last year, I see 14nm technologies in the realization stage and 10nm beckoning… Read More